The art of writing proposals

A proposal's overt function is to persuade a committee of scholars that the project shines with the three kinds of merit all disciplines value, namely, conceptual innovation, methodological rigor, and rich, substantive content. Writing for committee competition is an art quite different from research work itself.

you should choose your form bearing in mind that every proposal reader constantly scans for clear answers to three questions:

• What are we going to learn as the result of the proposed project that we do not know now?
  
• Why is it worth knowing?
  
• How will we know that the conclusions are valid? 

Beginning

Say what you have to say immediately, crisply, and forcefully. The opening paragraph, or the first page at most, is your chance to grab the reviewer's attention.

Questions that are clearly posed are an excellent way to begin a proposal. Stating your central point, hypothesis, or interpretation is also a good way to begin. Even if only step-by-step argumentation can define the central problem, do not fail to leave the reviewer with something to remember.

Avoid Jargon
Remember that most proposals are reviewed by multidisciplinary committees. You should avoid jargon as much as you can, and when technical language is really needed, restrict yourself to those new words and technical terms that truly lack equivalents in common language.

Reference
Your proposal should tell the committee not only what will be learned as a result of your project, but what will be learned that somebody else does not already know. It is essential that the proposal summarize the current state of knowledge and provide an up-to-date, comprehensive bibliography. Both should be precise and succinct. They need not constitute a review of the literature but a sharply focused view of the specific body or bodies of knowledge to which you will add.   

• Dissertation Abstracts International and Social Science Periodical Index
• Review of Economic Literature and Contemporary Sociology
• Handbook of Latin American Studies
• International African Bibliography
• Social Science Citations Index
• Social Sciences Index

Innovation

The fact that less is known about one's own chosen case, period, or country than about similar ones may work in the proposer's favor. 

Citing the importance of the events that provide the subject matter is another and perhaps less dubious appeal. Appealing to current importance may also work. It's crucial to convince readers that such topics are not merely timely, but that their current urgency provides a window into some more abiding problem. Among many social scientists, explicit theoretical interest counts heavily as a point of merit. Help your reader understand where the problem intersects the main theoretical debates in your field and show how this inquiry puts established ideas to the test or offers new ones. Good proposals demonstrate awareness of alternative viewpoints and argue the author's position in such a way as to address the field broadly, rather than developing a single sectarian tendency indifferent to alternatives.



Approach

Surprises, puzzles, and apparent contradictions can powerfully persuade the reviewer whose disciplinary superego enforces a commitment to systematic model building or formal theorizing.
It is often worthwhile to help readers understand how the research task grows from the intellectual history or current intellectual life of the country or region that generated it.
It pays to remember that topics of current salience, both theoretical and in the so- called real world, are likely to be a crowded field. 

Methodology

First, the proposal must specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations in terms of your central problem.
Second, a methodology is not just a list of research tasks but an argument as to why these tasks add up Help readers from other fields recognize what parts of your methodology are standard, which are innovative. Be as specific as you possibly can be about the activities you plan to undertake to collect information, about the techniques you will use to analyze it, and about the tests of validity to which you commit yourself.  
A research design proposing comparison between cases often has special appeal. In evaluating a comparative proposal, readers ask whether the cases are chosen in such a way that their similarities and differences illuminate the central question. The proposal should prove that the researcher either possesses, or cooperates with people who possess, mastery of all the technical matters the project entails.

Ending

Convince readers that something is genuinely at stake in the inquiry, that it is not tendentiously moving toward a preconceived end, and that this leaven of the unknown will yield interesting, orderly propositions. Proposals should normally describe the final product of the project: an article, book, chapter, dissertation, etc.